Make no mistake about it if you want to be successful in your Twitter marketing campaigns. You have to establish a persona, and you need to do it as early as possible.

What is a persona? A persona is a coherent and cogent online identity. It tells people, in no uncertain terms, that you stand for something. It is like your online brand on social media platforms.

Unfortunately, most marketers completely drop the ball when it comes to their persona. They think that a persona is just something that arises organically from all their efforts. They think it is some sort of byproduct of all the other direct marketing that they do on social media platforms.

This type of thinking completely gets the whole process wrong. You have to understand that everything you do online either pushes your brand forward or degrades it. There is no middle ground. There is no neutral gray area. You are either helping your brand, or you are weakening it.

I am sorry to break this to you, but a weak Twitter persona or a persona that is riddled with many mistakes will weaken your brand. Kiss all that hard work and hard-earned dollars you invested in your online brand good-bye. Here are the five most common Twitter persona mistakes committed by Twitter marketers.

Irrelevant Avatar

How many times have you seen a Twitter account that is obviously trying to market a product or service, but the avatar features a famous cartoon character? You have probably seen this quite a bit. The whole point behind the avatar is, of course, to be funny. The problem is this person is running the risk of being sued for intellectual property theft. Furthermore, this person is sending mixed signals.

Your avatar must be specific to the niche of the product or service you are promoting. Otherwise, you are not building a solid brand. Trying to be funny is not going to cut it.

Nonbranded Avatar

Your Avatar has to have something to do with your brand. A lot of people confuse brand with their logo. A lot of people think that as long as their header or banner features their logo, they are branding. It is absolutely wrong. Your brand is actually a series to a set and sequence of values that you are projecting to your target audience members.

If you do not pay attention to these core fundamental elements and bake them into your brand, you are not going to go anywhere. Similarly, your avatar must highlight these value-driven messages. Unfortunately, many Twitter marketers simply use random avatars because they are trying to be funny, or they are trying to convey some sort of attitude. They lose sight of the fact that their avatar is actually one of the biggest and most powerful ambassadors of their brand.

This is a very common mistake. The avatar’s branding power is easy to overlook. Sadly, if you choose an irrelevant avatar or a nonbranded avatar, your avatar does not highlight your brand. At the very least, your avatar does not make your content stand out. Your content share becomes easier to forget.

Nonbranded Cover

Your cover is the main branding vehicle that you get on Twitter, and you should not blow this opportunity. You should try to milk your cover for as much branding and marketing value as possible. Sadly, too many Twitter marketers focus primarily on their content shares and completely forget about their cover.

Even if they were to put up a cover, the cover is so generic that it really does not do their brand any favors. At the very least, your branded cover should instruct your viewer what to do. It should, at some level or other, lead to your brand.

Weak or No Call to Action on Your Covers

Assuming that you do get the concept of branding, and you incorporate brand elements into your cover, you are still only halfway there. To go all the way, you need to make sure that your cover has a call to action. You have to remember that your content builds credibility, but your cover points to your brand and calls the viewer to action. They have to do something. Your brand is weak and ineffective if it does not call the viewer to some sort of action.

You have to take a long, hard look at your cover and make sure that it tells people what to do. If your brand does not have a call to action, you are not going to convert people. You just wasted all that time and effort trying to market on Twitter and the very best you could hope for is that some way, somehow, your content would lead your viewers to your target website.

You have to use all the tools at your disposal, and you need to make sure that there is a powerful call to action incorporated in your cover.

Passive Persona

Your persona is one of your most powerful marketing weapons on Twitter. Pay serious attention to it. One of the ways you can blow it is the way you engage influence leaders. Your persona should make your brand’s personality stand out. Your persona should make it clear to the influence leaders you are engaging with that your brand has to be taken seriously. If you play the game right, you can use your persona as a gateway to greater influence for your brand.

If you want your Twitter campaigns to deliver serious results, you need to pay attention to the common mistakes outlined above. You need to work around them and come up with a powerful solution that would put your brand over the top.